The great idea about investing in an expensive bottle of wine, supposedly, is that if you cannot sell it for a decent price, there are other ways to enjoy it. This nice theory comes rather unstuck, however, when the waiter knocks over your bottle.

In 1989, according to an article by Nick Passmore published last decade in Forbes magazine, a waiter carrying a coffee tray in New York’s Four Seasons restaurant bumped into a bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787 and broke it.

The bottle’s owner, a New York wine merchant called William Sokolin, had been trying to sell the bottle for $500,000 – the price being helped by the bottle having Thomas Jefferson’s initials on it, which altered it from a bottle of presumably undrinkable wine to an historical artefact. At least Sokolin had had the sense to insure his property, and received $225,000 from the insurance company. What happened to the waiter has not been disclosed.

It is not just wine where this sort of exotic investment can go horribly wrong. According to London Central Portfolio – a property investment management that is trying to raise money for a fund, and therefore has an interest in pointing out the failings of other investments – racehorses are another fragile asset.

Three out of four of the most expensive racehorse purchases turned out unhappily, it said.